


somewhere in between (the beginning and the end)

by lachambre11



Category: One Tree Hill, Social Network (2010)
Genre: Angst and Humor, M/M, One Tree Hill - Freeform, Slash, mark/eduardo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:45:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachambre11/pseuds/lachambre11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Dustin and Eduardo are half-brothers, Mark has no regard whatsoever for the rules of the bro-code, and hijinks ensue! Au, but the lawsuit still happens. Written for a prompt at tsn kink meme!</p>
            </blockquote>





	somewhere in between (the beginning and the end)

**Author's Note:**

> So. Okay, so it’s angst meets crack, meets teeth-rotting fluff, meets one-too-many One Tree Hill references, and a Harry Potter reference. Quite possibly nothing like the prompter asked for as well, but it was labor of love.

*˜*

In the end, it was all Dustin’s fault.

If only he hadn’t thought how great would it be if his brother and his best friend were friends as well. If only he hadn’t introduced them, hadn’t given them all the alone time in the world, even encouraged what he thought was the first signs of a beautiful, lasting friendship.

If only…

But no, Dustin knew, deep down, he could only blame himself for the scene unfolding right before his eyes – his best friend lips’ defiling his baby brother's (only by seven months, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Eduardo’s protested), on the same couch were they shared meals and fought epic battles of life and death over Resident Evil.

“What the fuck!” It seemed like Dustin had finally found his voice. “Get your hands off my brother!”

Mark jumped from Eduardo’s lap to stand across the room so fast that it would have Dustin questioning whether or not he possessed super speed or something, hadn’t it not be for the fact that his best friend and his baby brother were getting it on.

On their couch.

“Now let’s be rational about this –” Eduardo started, but Dustin could only stare at Mark with wide, betrayed eyes. Mark, who was looking back defiantly, despite having squeaked like a little girl when Dustin walked in on the two of them.

“I can’t believe this!” He ran his hands through his hair. “My best friend and my baby brother! My best friend! My baby brother! What about the rules?”

“Dustin, calm down,” Chris’ voice sounded breathless, as if he'd sprinted here from across the campus, which he had, because once Dustin had figured out that Chris had only invited him to the movies to keep him away from their dorm for some reason, he took off and ran back home.

“You!” Dustin turned around to confront him. “You knew, and you lured me out just so they could do - ” and he gesticulated wildly around the living room on Mark's general direction, “that.”

“Yes, I knew,” Chris admitted with an exasperated sigh. “I think everybody but you already what was going on between them, Dustin. So don’t. Freak. Out.”

“Traitors!” He let out a war cry and launched himself towards Mark, not really sure what he wanted to do to him in the first place, but past caring. Dustin could find a way to make sure that Mark knew that sleeping with one’s brother, especially your best friends’ little brother, wasn’t cool at all. “You broke the rules, Mark. And for that, you shall die.”

“Rules?” Eduardo demanded from the couch, but Chris just shrugged in that resigned way of his.

“YES!” Dustin was getting a little breathless himself from all the running in circles around the living room, chasing Mark, so he stopped. It’s not like he wouldn't punish the guy, okay? It’s just that he’s was a programmer, not a marathon runner. Or someone else who had an awesome lung-capacity.

“It’s only the first rule of the bro-code,” he announced solemnly, before pretending he was wiping out an imaginary book and dramatically quoting, “The utmost, most basic law of brotherhood. An it says ‘If you've known a guy for more than 24 hours, his sister is off limits forever! Unless you actually marry her’.”

He paused for dramatic effect and looked around the room. Mark was gaping like a goldfish, Chris had a pinched look on his face that meant he was seriously considering walking out of this entire conversation, and Eduardo was blushing scarlet, which was just crazy, given that he had that golden, tanned skin of his.

“You guys would've known this if you were better friends,” Dustin pouted, closing his imaginary book and placing it on his imaginary shelf. “Even if Eduardo's not a girl, it’s still a valid rule. He’s off limits, Mark.”

“Forever.”

*˜*  
It started with a boy, Daniel Potter, and the fact that he couldn’t quite keep it in his pants.

Or at least that’s how Dustin tells the story.

Once upon a time, in the early eighties, Daniel Potter was an awesome football player from Gainesville Florida, who was set to marry his high school sweetheart, Miriam Moskovitz. Then he got an offer to join a great team on Brazil and three weeks later Miriam found out she was pregnant. They needed the money, so he decided to take the offer.

She was supposed to stay in Florida and proceed with the wedding preparations.

He was supposed to play for one season and come back before their baby was born so they could get married and move indefinitely to Brazil.

Except, once he got there, he met Helena Saverin. She was a breathtaking beauty, and she was also the heiress of a Jewish-Brazilian fortune. They met, she fell in love, and he decided to court her while neglecting to inform her of the fact that he was engaged to be married to someone else.

And that he also had a kid on the way.

Because Helena’s father disapproved of their relationship, she and Daniel eloped quietly. Her father was furious, but there was nothing he could do now. Daniel continued to play football, while also failing to mention to his fiancée back home, now seven months pregnant, that he had gotten married to someone else.

Then Helena’s father died of a sudden stroke, she found out she was going to have a baby, and Daniel got hit with an illegal fault during a competition and sustained an irreversible injury.

Basically, everything went to hell.

Except it got worse.

Because senior Saverin’s death was wildly publicized, as well as the fact that his daughter had gotten married to an American football player in the sly, it got back to Miriam that her fiancée had already married someone else. 

She was nearly nine months pregnant at the time.

A healthy baby boy named Dustin was born in the middle of this whole mess, and Miriam decided that, while she didn’t want the boy to have the same surname as his scumbag of a father, he at least deserved to know the man that gave him 50% of his genetic material.

So when Dustin was six months old, she flew into Brazil and confronted Daniel.

She was also confronted with the sight of Daniel’s very pregnant and stunned wife, whom, after gotten past her initial shock, kicked her husband out and invited Miriam to stay with her for as long as she felt comfortable with.

It turned out they had a lot in common apart from their awful taste in men, and before Miriam knew it, she was holding Helena’s hand as she pushed a loud, dark-haired boy to be named Eduardo Saverin into this world.

Helena divorced Daniel, took over her father’s company, and remained best friends with Miriam once she and Dustin got back to Florida. They traded visits back and forth during the next decade or so, a constant fixture in each other's lives.

Eduardo’s mother never remarried, but she was Miriam’s maid-of-honor when she ended up falling in love with Daniel’s older brother, Jack Potter, the guy that had been helplessly in love with his brother’s girl ever since she was sixteen years old.

Despite their asshole of a father and the fact that they lived in different hemispheres, Dustin and Eduardo grew up to be as close as two brothers could be. They talked at least twice a week, visited on school holidays, and even though they fought, occasionally, everything was sorted out a couple of hours later.

But when Eduardo was thirteen years old, his life was endangered. His family’s high profile in their country turned out to be a threat to his life, and her mother didn’t even hesitated before accepting Miriam’s suggestion of coming to live near them, in Miami, and lead an inconspicuous, safe life.

So the boys lived across the street from each other, and apart from tense meetings twice a month with their father, their teenage years went by relatively unscathed. Miriam and Jack had twins that, under Dustin’s suggestion, were named Harry and James. Helena met Charlie Wilson, an ophthalmologist, and after two years they moved in together, even though she claimed she would never remarry again.

Dustin discovered he loved computers, videogames and general silliness. Eduardo discovered he loved numbers, his hair, and sometimes, he also loved kissing boys as much as he liked kissing girls, which was something he told his brother with a broken voice and downcast eyes.

It didn’t bothered Dustin in the slightest, and he made sure Eduardo knew that he'd nothing to be ashamed about.

So they grew up, and they stuck together, and Dustin got into Harvard. Eduardo followed him out there only an year later, so that they could be awesome together on Massachusetts. Everyone was happy.

Except that the admissions office placed Dustin with a blond, patient boy named Chris Hughes, and a infuriating, brilliant boy named Mark Zuckerberg. They were his roommates, and with time, they also became his friends. 

The rest, as one would say, was history.

Except that maybe it wasn’t the end of the story at all, but quite possibly the beginning of it, or at least the part in which Dustin was scarred for life when he walked into his dorm, during the middle of sophomore year, and got an eyeful of his best friend grinding down on the lap of his little brother, who seemed to be enjoying this way too much for it to be something that had never happened before.

So, yes, Dustin was traumatized for life.

And maybe he was a little bit angry too.

I mean - his best friend was boning his baby brother?

There were rules, strict rules, about that sort of thing.

It was so not okay, and Mark needed to know that.

*˜*

“Forever, Mark,” Dustin repeated one more time, just for emphasis.

“Yeah, you’ve said that four times now,” he snapped. “I get it.”

“Apparently you don’t, because if you did, you’d be apologizing right now,” Dustin growled out. “Where are mine I’m-sorry-for-groping-your-baby-brother cookies, Mark? You better start baking them!”

“I don’t this is advisable, Dustin,” his brother said, finally seeming to get it together. “Mark can barely make noodles without setting the kitchen on fire.”

“I second this motion,” Chris, who would be forever known as The Traitor in Dustin's book, agreed, before settling down on the armchair across Eduardo.

“Shut. Up.” Mark demanded with no real bite behind his tone, sounding instead kind of – was it fond? Was this real life? “I don’t know how to bake. And even if I did, there would be no cookies," he mumbled out, "because I’m not sorry about Wardo.”

That was the moment when Dustin decided he was clearly hallucinating everything, because those words? Coming from Mark, out of all people? What. The. Fuck.

And then, then Eduardo decided to look at Mark as if he'd just hung the moon, shooting him a wide, bright smile that got returned with as much fervor as Mark could manage to demonstrate. Even his dimples were showing.

Who even knew Mark had dimples?

“I’m sorry you had to find out like this, Dustin,” his brother said, not looking very sorry at all. “And I know it’s hard for you to wrap your mind around it, but Mark and I are very happy together.”

At this, Dustin, Mark, and even Chris rolled their eyes, but Eduardo just chuckled before continuing, “I honestly thought at first that you were trying to set us up in one of your deranged, match-matching rampages. So, in a roundabout way, you were our cupid. It is almost like we got together because of you.”

“No it’s not,” Dustin and Mark protested it at the same time.

“Then whose fault is it?” Chris cajoled, mostly because he'd always been a little shit-stirrer like that.

“I blame Mark’s complete disregard of the rules of brotherhood,” Dustin explained, calmed off enough to sprawl himself on the floor near Chris. "And a probable brain injury on my brother’s part."

He was never sitting on that couch again, thank you very much. He was even considering calling that crazy Christy girl and enlisting her help into setting the thing on fire. He hadn't ruled that idea out yet.

“His fucking eyes,” was all Mark said, a faint blush spreading across his cheeks.

Everyone was quiet for a couple of seconds.

Then Eduardo blurted out, “Mark’s lips,” and life was officially not worth living anymore.

“Jesus, Wardo,” Mark muttered out, getting redder by the second.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Chris agreed easily at the same time.

Another minute went by in complete, awkward silence.

“Mary mother of Joseph, take me into your arms right now,” Dustin prayed, turning around and flopping facedown on the floor. Doing this to himself didn’t hurt half as much as hearing Eduardo’s words did.

“You’re Jewish,” Chris pointed out.

“Whatever. I just want this to end.”

“If you die, can I date Wardo then?”

“No, Mark," he sighed. "There are rules!”

*˜*

“Dustin, go away,” Mark said, barely glancing up from his laptop to where Dustin was bouncing manically on his bed.

“Come on, Mark!” He begged. “It’s the first AEPi’s party of this semester. This is a valuable chance to meet some new people, and when I say people, I mean girls.”

“I don’t care about people,” Mark replied without even missing a beat. “Leave me alone.”

“My brother will be there as well,” Dustin continued his soliloquy, pretending not to have listened to Mark's plea. “He’s awesome, even though he’s a freshmen, and he’s all Brazilian and polite and shit, which girls fall all over themselves for, even though it’s kind of a waste of their time half the time, seeing he’s a person of equal opportunity.”

“Equal opportunity?”

“Yeah, you know,” and he shrugged. “Bisexual? Whatever. He’s great, even though, despite the fact that he’s my little brother and he's supposed to worship me, he doesn’t care much to listen to my sage words of wisdom.”

“Then he’s like everybody else, then,” was Mark’s snarky response, before he stopped typing and swiveled his chair around to face Dustin. “Wait, how is he your brother when he’s Brazilian? I thought your family was from Florida or something.”

“Yeah, actually, it’s all very One Tree Hill-esque,” Dustin explained. “You know how it is with the main characters, Lucas and Nathan, they are half brothers. Their father is an asshole who walked out on his pregnant girlfriend, only to impregnate someone else. The guy that came up with this show stole my life, I swear to God, I’m gonna sue him one day.”

“What?”

“You've never seen One Tree Hill?” Dustin was flabbergasted. “I mean, don’t tell me you're an O.C fan, Mark, not after all these months. I was actually starting to like you.”

But Mark just kept on staring with his dead-dead eyes that were clearly telling Dustin something along the lines of does-not-compute.

“Fuck me,” Dustin whispered. “You know nothing about current television, don’t you?” Well, well, well, he might just have to remedy that. “Forget the party, we’re staying in. I have the first season on tape, we’re going to have an One Tree Hill marathon, and you’re gonna love it. This is so exciting!"

With that, he bounded out of Mark’s room with a renewed spring on his step, whistling a catchy pop tune that Mark couldn’t quite identify, and didn't even wanted to.

*˜*

“Remind me who you’re supposed to be again?” Mark asked sometime around episode eleven.

“Lucas, Mark. He’s the blond, broody one who has all the hot girls chasing after him.”

“That doesn’t sound like you at all, you’re hyperactive and ginger,” Mark’s brow was furrowed, like he was trying hard to figure something out. “Also, I’ve never seen you doing something athletic ever since we met. Once Billy threw you a Ping-Pong ball and your direction and you flinched. There’s just no way you know how to handle a basketball.”

“There’s also a distinct lack of girls fighting over you that it would require for this to be true,” he finished.

“Shut up,” Dustin counter-attacked. “You don’t know my life.”

“Also, if your brother is anything like that Nathan guy, he’s an asshole,” Mark continued, relentless. “An asshole with terrible hair. I don’t understand what Haley even seems to find remotely redeemable about him. He's not even smart.”

“You just don’t appreciate the tragedy of our lives.”

“I don’t have time for this, I’m going to code some more,” Mark said before striding out of their living room and shutting his door with considerable force, considering that he’d claimed not to care about the show and its characters.

But Dustin knew better.

Mark was hooked, and it was just the beginning.

*˜*

“Aw damn it Mark, you’re Haley!” Dustin shouted suddenly, foregoing his idea to cuddle with the floor so as to avoid staring at his traitor of a best friend, little brother and Chris. “If you and Eduardo got married without telling me and you took his virginity, I will kick your ass to Dobbs Ferry and back,” he threatened. 

Eduardo looked like he was choking on his own tongue, whereas Chris was fighting back tears of laughter. Mark kept fidgeting under Dustin’s stare, and suddenly, he got it.

“You married Eduardo?”

Chris laughter increased tenfold, a little bit on the manic side, and he said, “Try again.”

“You took my brother’s virginity?”

Mark had the decency to blush beet-red and look legitimately scared for his life.

“I can’t even–” and he just collapsed on the floor again, shielding his eyes with his left arm. This is what a heart attack must feel like. His soul hurt so much that not even cuddling with a cute puppy could cure his pain.

“I love him,” Eduardo whispered out after what it felt like fifteen years of terse silence. “This isn’t just about sex, Dustin. I - I’m in love with him.”

And just when you think things couldn’t possibly get any worst, this happens, Dustin thinks.

*˜*

“So?”

“So what, Dustin?”

“What did you think of my brother?”

“He’s fine.”

“Come on, Marky Mark. I saw he made you smile, like, six times. That’s about three times more than that girl Erica ever managed to accomplish during the weeks you guys dated back in freshmen year.”

“Whatever.”

“You know, it would be really cool if we could all just be friends and hang out together,” Dustin suggested, wriggling his eyebrows. “I bet that, given the chance, Eduardo can even make you laugh.”

“Leave me alone, Dustin.”

“You’re saying these awful words, Mark, but I can hear what you're really saying.” Then he announced with a flourish, “One Tree Hill is on tonight.”

“Why should I care?”

“So you wouldn’t want me to crank up the volume and leave the door of your room wide opened, just in case you got a glimpse of a certain dark-haired, reformed bad boy named Nathan Scott?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Ok, Mark,” he agreed easily and left the room, but not before, to Mark’s utter and complete horror, winking at him.

“Oh look,” Dustin announced all the way from the couch. “It’s the Dare Night episode. I bet this will be good. Let’s see what this idiot Felix guy comes up with.”

Mark growled and threw a pillow at the living room, but got up and joined Dustin in the couch anyway.

They watched the episode together, and another two after that, but they don’t talk about it.

Ever.

*˜*

“Is it true Eduardo?” Dustin demanded from the floor. “Are you really in love with Mark?”

“I am,” Eduardo agreed easily.

"Oh,” he breathed out after a couple of seconds. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Mark asked, cautiously sitting by Eduardo on the couch and letting him twine their fingers together.

Will wonders ever cease? 

Mark never said he loved Eduardo as well, but even Dustin could see the way Mark looked at his brother, with a mix of exasperation and wonder in his eyes. Like he couldn't quite believe that he'd managed to get someone like Eduardo to fall in love with him.

If that wasn't love, Dustin doesn’t know what love is.

“Okay,” he agreed, and he even managed a smile in their direction.

Eduardo beamed at him, Mark shrugged, and Chris just seemed to be amused by their general existence.

“Just don’t run off with Chris Keller to pursuit your career in music, okay?"

Eduardo looked like he didn't understood what the hell Dustin and Mark were talking about at all, while Chris just said, without missing a beat, “Mark can’t carry a tune to save his life”.

But Dustin knew his friend understood him perfectly when Mark stared at his eyes and gave him a sharp nod.

They had an understanding.

*˜*

Then Facebook, Sean Parker, the endless discussions about ads, California, getting left behind, freezing the account, one million members and the broken laptop happened.

Eduardo went back to Harvard and stopped answering his brother’s calls for several months, stopped visiting Miami, just stopped smiling altogether.

And Dustin, who had never hit anyone in his entire life, gave Mark a black eye.

"We had an understanding," he bit out, and Mark just sighed like he knew, knew that things were screwed up beyond repair.

Dustin moved out of the house they were all sharing in Palo Alto, and he got his own place. He stopped talking to Mark about anything but Facebook for almost an year, and he refused to get involved with the lawsuit.

But it wasn't enough.

Eduardo and Mark - they were broken, in every possible way.

All there was left were bits and pieces, angry words, stares and accusations, then silence, and Dustin was left reeling.

It wasn't supposed to end like this.

*˜*

After the settlement, Eduardo started to travel to and from Asian for business a lot more frequently, until he just decided to moved to Singapore.

Dustin's relationship with little brother starts to recover, but it's not the same, it's strained, filled with land mines and the things they can't, won't, don't know how to talk about.

He might not have known about the different papers his brother was signing, but Dustin still stuck by Facebook, even remained friends with Mark. Eduardo might've understood his reasons for staying, for forgiving, but there was this distance between them there had never been there before.

He couldn't quite forgive Mark for doing what he did to his brother, to the friendship the four of them had, but he saw the quiet misery in his eyes, the loneliness that weighted him down, the way he sometimes stared at Dustin as if he was searching for some resemblance, anything, that could remind of the dark-haired boy that loved him once.

Dustin sometimes thought that he understood where Mark was coming from better than anyone else does.

But that doesn't mean it's easier to forgive him for it.

*˜*

Chris leaves them for Obama, and for the Sean-who’s-not-Parker.

*˜*

If he had to be honest, when they first started with Facebook, he'd always assumed it would be the four of them against the world. That they would be each other's constants. And it might be silly, even naive, but Dustin can find it in himself to accept that this is the way their story ends.

Even crappy TV shows that got cancelled halfway had gotten better endings than this.

*˜*

“I got the nine seasons of One Tree Hill on DVD,” Mark said one night, after calling Dustin out of the blue.

“It’s two in the morning.”

“I know.”

A pause. A sigh.

“Give me twenty minutes.”

Of course Mark hung up without a thank you.

Asshole.

*˜*

“You think Nathan will ever forgive Haley for leaving?” Mark voice sounded small, and yeah, Dustin is anything but stupid, thank you. He knows they’re not really talking about Haley and Nathan.

“What she did was pretty messed-up,” he pointed out.

“She came back, though,” and if it were anyone else, Dustin would say that it sounded like the person was pouting. But it was Mark, so. “She said she was really sorry. She said that she loves him, ‘always and forever’.”

“I don’t think that’s all it takes, Mark.” And Dustin really wished that it would. He really did. “What she did was really shitty. He trusted her, and she broke that. She walked out, cut him off like he didn’t mean a thing. She made him feel like her dreams mattered and he didn't, like their marriage meant nothing to her.”

A pause. A sigh.

“He forgives her, though.” And the look of unadulterated hope on Mark’s eyes made something that he didn’t even knew it was there loosen up inside Dustin’s chest. “He makes her work for it, but he eventually forgives her. And after a lot of obstacles, they live happily ever after.”

“Okay,” was all Mark said, but he watched the rest of the season with a small, secret smile on his face, and even pretended he didn't tear up a bit when the couple reunite on-screen.

Whatever.

Mark wasn't the tidiest person in the world, and he didn't had a housekeeper, so it was just really dusty on his house, okay? That his story, and Dustin is sticking with it.

*˜*

“A dog ate their father’s heart.”

“I know.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“This show is ridiculous. How did it stayed in the air for so long?”

“I don’t know,” and Dustin could admit that. “There's just something about it that inspires people.”

“Yeah,” Mark acknowledged. “I know.”

*˜*

As the last season ended, Mark turned to him and asked –

“Can I have Wardo’s number?”

Dustin thought about it for a couple of minutes, weighting out his options.

Eduardo was settled in Singapore. He'd a job he liked well enough, friends, and a cat named Isis. He'd been serious about a guy, then a girl, but it hadn't worked out with neither. Whenever he asks Eduardo's about his life, his brother claims that he's fine. That he's comfortable where he is.

But Dustin remembers it’s been six months since he last saw his brother. He remembers the defeated way Eduardo carried himself after the settlement, the effort he always put into not asking about Mark’s wellbeing every time they talked.

He remembers Eduardo's blinding smile that night when Dustin found out about him and Mark, the way his whole face lightened up when Mark stepped up and said he wasn’t sorry about being with Eduardo.

Dustin remembers that fine it's not great, and that being comfortable doesn't exactly means being happy.

Dustin makes a decision.

“Don’t fuck it up again,” he glowers at Mark, before sending him a text with Eduardo's phone number. He means it, and he can tell by the way that Mark looks at him that he knows that there will be no do-overs this time.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” that’s all Mark says.

*˜*

It takes a lot of time, and it isn’t easy, by any means.

But eventually, Eduardo and Mark forgive each other, and the mistakes they both made along the way.

Eduardo starts to smile again, his real smile, the one that makes his whole face lights up. Mark starts to work reasonable hours, he even takes vacation days, and there's no misery in his eyes, no weight on his shoulders.

Chris is around a lot more often, and it turns out that Sean-who's-not-Parker is a lot fun to be around. Dustin finally falls in love with a girl that’s so quirky and wonderful that it makes him want to shout from the rooftops about the way he feels about her.

It’s kind of perfect, really.

*˜*

“Get your hands off my sister,” Mark warns Dustin, his voice low and dangerous. Eduardo grasps his shoulders, trying to get him to calm down. It would warm Dustin's heart to see how his friend looks at his brother and leans into his touch, if it weren’t for the threat of disembowelment written on Mark’s eyes when he glances back at him. “Jesus, Dustin.”

Arielle glowers at Mark as Dustin scrambles to the other side of the couch.

“I’m a big girl, Mark,” she says, trying to fix her hair so that it doesn’t look like Dustin had been tugging on them for about fifteen minutes now. Which he has, because her hair awesome.

“There are rules, Ari. Dustin was the one to introduce me to them, actually, about ten years ago.”

Dustin hangs his head in shame, while Eduardo just chuckles.

“You’re no help, little brother.”

“Hey,” Eduardo admonishes. “Mark’s right. You were the one who made a big deal about the laws of the bro-code and whatnot. He even kept his end of the bargain by marrying me, so you have no ground to stand on.”

And with that he glances at their entwined hands, identical golden bands on their ring fingers, beaming. The act in itself is equal parts nauseating and sweet. Mark just rolls his eyes and lifts their joined hand to kiss the place where Eduardo’s ring meets his knuckles, which just makes Dustin want to vomit rainbows all over the rug.

“God, you guys are saps,” Arielle says, before getting up and blowing Dustin a kiss, which he pretends to catch and store inside his heart, under Mark’s watchful stare. “I’m meeting our sisters for lunch, so I’m out of here. Dustin if you even think about giving me a promise ring so that my brother won’t kill you, I’ll make sure you don’t get access to my lady parts for a month.”

He gasps. Eduardo groans. Mark looks like he wants to die.

“At least I didn’t took her virginity, right Mark?” he tries to joke, but his friend just stares at him with his dead-dead eyes. “Mark? Mark? Shit!”

He probably should’ve seen the slap that hit the back of his head coming, but he’d never expected Eduardo, his own brother, not to side with him on this.

“That really hurt,” he protests.

“Go tell that to someone who cares, Dustin,” Mark retorts with a smirk. “Thank you, husband,” he turns and says to Eduardo, a soft look in his eyes, his smirk turning into one of his secret, only-for-Wardo smiles.

“You’re welcome, husband,” his brother shoots back, an equal dopey grin on his face.

Dustin could pretend to be more annoyed than he really is, but his life? It’s pretty fucking great right now.

After a couple of years where there was nothing but angst, misery, manly tears and radio silence, to be able to have all of his friends and his brother back, feeling this happy, well, it looks like something straight out of a TV show.

Screw One Tree Hill, he decides. My life is so much better! Even if there’s no crazy stalkers, cars falling out of bridges, loud and whiny soundtrack as the background, or a dog eating people's hearts.

So what is he has to watch Mark and Eduardo make sex-eyes at each other for the rest of their lives?

Dustin's surprisingly okay with that.

He might even end up getting Arielle that ring.

Who knows?

The rest, as one may say - well, the rest was history

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?


End file.
